


it only hurts when I laugh

by sabinelagrande



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Potentially Disturbing Content, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was long enough ago that she was still Russian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it only hurts when I laugh

It was a long time ago. It was long enough that she wasn't even that old, just more than old enough. It was long enough that she was still Russian, before she knew that she didn't know who she was at all.

\--

She walked up to him one night in a bar in New York, wearing seamback stockings and an American accent. He was exactly what she expected; he pushed his glasses up his nose and peered at her, and he needed no convincing at all to come to her hotel room. He didn't talk business in bed, but she was better than that. It was nothing to convince him to let her work with him, something menial and mostly decorative. Howard's eyes lingered on her, but it was more frown than smile, as if he knew, as if there was no chance someone like Vanko could get someone like her. 

He was right, of course.

It was boring, but boring beat out a lot of things. It got better when the money started to come in, when he set her up in her own apartment, where she could send everyone else away and actually keep her training up for once. It dragged on and on, and she thought over and over about snapping his neck. He wasn't that bad, in the scheme of things; she just thought that about everybody.

There was little she could do but wait. It wouldn't do for Vanko to meet with an accident, not when she was so close, not when there was every chance she could bring him right back.

And then he acted just like a Russian.

And they sent him home.

\--

They pampered him, the first week back in Moscow. That was precisely how long it took for him to give up everything he knew; that was precisely how long it took for them to know that she knew everything he did; that was precisely how long they waited before they tortured him.

He returned to his old neighborhood, and Vanko never saw her again.

She saw a lot of Vanko.

\--

She's not Ivan's mother. She'll never be anyone's mother; they saw to that the first time they needed her body for a mission. She knew his mother. She knew his mother very well, better than Anton ever knew her, better than her parents or her teachers or her friends or anyone she ever met in her entire life.

She knew those old ramshackle buildings that Anton and his family had to move to were firetraps, pure and simple. She knew no one would know how the fire started and no one would care where. She knew when Anton would be away, and she knew Ivan was an acceptable loss.

She already knew what it would smell like, and as she walked away, there was no need to look back.

\--

Good things never happened in Russia, not then, not in the Russia that Vanko knew. It was freezing and gray, nothing but sickness, nothing but cold, nothing but that and vodka, always vodka, vodka when there was nothing else, vodka that made it all go away for just a little while.

In the end, she didn't have to kill Anton.

He killed himself.

Mission accomplished.


End file.
